CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

In the midst of a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in per­for­mance in the Sec­ondary En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion (SEA) in 2022, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion ini­ti­at­ed the Va­ca­tion Re­vi­sion Pro­gramme (VRP) aimed at get­ting the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9,000 stu­dents who scored 50 per cent and un­der up to sec­ondary school stan­dard.

How­ev­er, based on sta­tis­tics re­vealed by Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Dr Pe­ter Smith at a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, the pro­gramme was un­der-sub­scribed.

“It was an­tic­i­pat­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly nine thou­sand would have at­tend­ed the Va­ca­tion Re­vi­sion Pro­gramme with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 600 teach­ers pro­vid­ing the in­struc­tion...ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,900 at­tend­ed the Va­ca­tion Re­vi­sion Pro­gramme,” Smith said.

He said a pre-test and a post-test were ad­min­is­tered to the stu­dents in or­der to gauge the ef­fec­tive­ness of the pro­gramme, which will now be con­tin­ued un­til 2027.

He said a re­port on the pro­gramme is be­ing com­piled and is ex­pect­ed to be pre­sent­ed to the Cab­i­net by ear­ly Oc­to­ber.

Dr Smith al­so said mov­ing for­ward, the min­istry has a plan to re­vise the op­er­a­tions at 26 schools where the un­der­per­form­ing stu­dents will be at­tend­ing as part of a five-year plan.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, the first phase of that plan will see all the stu­dents in ques­tion retest­ed in two years.

“The stu­dents who would have scored un­der 50, they will be re­quired to do what was for­mer­ly the pri­ma­ry school leav­ing, it is now the low­er sec­ondary pro­fi­cien­cy ex­am­i­na­tion, so they will do that in Form 2,” she said.

The Min­is­ter ad­mit­ted that the time­frame for the VRP was sim­ply not enough for what is to be ac­com­plished.

“We un­der­stand that four weeks of in­struc­tion, though it would have been im­por­tant in en­gag­ing the stu­dents and re­duc­ing the learn­ing loss that would have tak­en place when they were not en­gaged, would not be enough to meet the needs of the stu­dents, that is why we have in­sti­tut­ed the re­vised op­er­a­tions of schools,” she ex­plained.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the re­vised op­er­a­tions will not fo­cus on­ly on cur­ricu­lum changes but “mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­ing for the stu­dents, en­sur­ing that the school-based in­ter­ven­tion team meets fort­night­ly in these schools.”

She said a lot of fo­cus will al­so be placed on teacher train­ing, timetable ad­just­ment and as­sign­ing school so­cial work­ers and guid­ance coun­cil­lors.

“So, it is a pro­gramme that spans quite a few ar­eas and it deals with the en­tire op­er­a­tions of the school, look­ing at it for a five-year pe­ri­od,” she added.

Mean­while, com­ment­ing on calls for teach­ers to stay away from work on the first day of school next week, Gads­by-Dol­ly said she is con­vinced teach­ers will do what is right.

“The school term runs from Sep­tem­ber 5th and it runs straight un­to Ju­ly 2023, so we know that our teach­ers will do what is best for the chil­dren as is al­ways the case,” she said.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De­fre­itas could not con­firm or de­ny if teach­ers would rest and re­flect on the first day of the new school year.

But she did say com­ing out of a gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing last Fri­day, teach­ers ex­pressed their dis­ap­point­ment with the of­fer made to them by Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al, which she said was sim­i­lar to the four per cent of­fer made to the pro­tec­tive ser­vices. She said this may have trig­gered the mes­sage seen cir­cu­lat­ing on What­sApp en­cour­ag­ing teach­ers to rest and re­flect, as they “don’t feel val­ued.”